One of our most challenging parts of our English language program is our three-week intensive writing workshops. For our Basic and Pre-Intermediate students, it is the first time for most of them to write a paragraph in English, but this instruction prepares them for the most difficult tasks in the Intermediate and Advanced courses, which include cover letter and resume writing. We made some great achievements in our writing program this year. Nicole was able to finish up ALL of the teacher-training lessons for all of BEA's language courses and prepare a teacher's manual and student workbook for each course. Another milestone was implementing our Cambodian-led writing workshop teacher-training sessions. Shally, BEA's head teacher, took over all writing workshop training this year for Sarith, our newest teacher who was teaching the writing workshop for the first time. Finally, Sarith, with only two-years of teaching experience, was able to run and teach her own writing lessons for both of her Basic and Pre-Intermediate courses after her training sessions with Shally. Since writing is the toughest skill to teach, especially to beginner learners, it is often challenging for even experience writing teachers. However, Sarith was able to guide her students through the writing process with ease to have them produce some very polished pieces of writing!

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an accredited NGO school that provides English language education, leadership, and job skills programs to underprivileged youth from well-trained teachers in a safe, clean and professional environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The Pre-Intermediate BEA kids and Teacher Sarith have been buzzing around all week long getting ready for their group poster presentations about Cambodian illnesses and remedies. As part of the Pre-Intermediate course, students spend two weeks learning how to describe common illnesses and medicines for them, as well as how to give advice to their friends and foreign visitors when they are sick. After these speaking and listening lessons, students then prepare a group presentation in which they choose 4-5 Cambodian illnesses, such as malaria, dysentery, dengue fever, among many others, and then describe their symptoms and remedies for them. Such topics are part of BEA's program goals which include increasing awareness about health issues and connecting our language program to the daily lives of our students. As usual, Teacher Sarith did an amazing job preparing her students for these presentations and the BEA kids made her proud with their creative presentations.

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an accredited NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education and job skills in a safe, clean and professional environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The floods have finally started to drain away, and life is slowly returning to normal in Siem Reap. September was a very difficult month for all of us, but here's hoping the floods will stay away for now.

We were back to the books this week after our one-week break for the Pchum Ben festival. It's back to work until our next long break in November for the Water Festival.

The Writing Exchange Program: In JapanDuring the first week of the fall semester back in Japan, my students got their first letters from their Cambodian partners. In total, there are 104 students in four different students participating in this project. Students in BEA's Intermediate course are paired with my Integrated English Skill seminar course while BEA's Pre-Intermediate course are matched with my English Communication course.

Before my students got to read their letters, I prepared a 20-minute power point presentation to give my students some basic background information on education in Cambodia, BEA and the students’ lives. My students then got their letters and had the remaining class time to introduce their partner and discuss significant points with their groups.

In their written “reflections” after class about the lesson, almost all of my students commented that “I knew Cambodia was poor, but I didn’t know it was that poor.” Many of the students also expressed shame because they felt that they had taken for granted their educational opportunities in Japan. Most surprisingly, students said their partner’s letter has now motivated them to study harder and appreciate the chance they have at university to learn.

For homework, my students had to comment on their partner’s letter and write on the first theme: a self-introduction. I was quite impressed with the effort the Japanese students put into their letters. Many of them included photos and drawings from their lives, and many letters included “print club” stickers. These are tiny photos from automated booths that print out the photos on multi-colored backgrounds. You can often fit 5 people in these booths for group photos. When I first came to Japan many years ago, I used to frequent the game centers with these booth taking “print club” with my Japanese friends.

Deny’s partner, Mayuka, included photos from her summer vacation in Greech. Vannack’s partner, Shoki, included beautifully hand-draw Chinese calligraphy on traditional Japanese paper. Little did I know, Shoki is a calligraphy master!!

Writing Exchange Program: In CambodiaIn yesterday's lessons for the Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate courses, BEA students received their first letters from their Japanese writing partners. Shally and I have had to quite a bit of "cultural preparation" for this program. One of the challenges we had when the BEA students received the "profile cards" for their Japanese partner at the start of September was the large number of cultural-specific vocabulary. At the end of my semester in July, students in my English communication and Integrated Skills Seminar courses had to complete a one-page profile card - just some basic background information about themselves for the BEA students before they wrote their first letters.

During the introduction to this program, Shally and I spent most of our class time explaining this culture-specific vocabulary to the BEA students. Because of the age difference between my Japanese students and myself, I even found this quite challenging, especially since Japanese idols and fashion trends change so rapidly that it's impossible to keep up with at times.

Since I'm back in Japan now, I didn't want to leave Shally completely only own to figure out this cultural content on his own. Last week, before I sent of the letters from my Japanese students, I spent an evening trekking through Tokyo getting as many postcards as possible that included all the cultural vocabulary my students included in their letters. To my embarrassment, after 14 years in Japan, I didn't have a SINGLE Japanese postcard in my collection of picture files!!!

Once Shally received the letters and postcard packets, we had one of our skype training sessions. We brainstormed ideas how to introduce cultural concepts to the BEA students and then went through the place names and things pictured in the postcards. Shally was then able to plan his lesson introducing these terms so that the students would recognize them when they read them in their letters.

In yesterday’s lessons, each group of students received one of these postcard packets and got 20 minutes to comment and ask questions about them. Shally then instructed them to note these terms when they came across them in their letters. It’s always much easier to visualize a concept rather than spend time explaining it.

Shally commented that the BEA kids were really happy to read their partners’ letters and were excited to discuss them in their groups. For homework, they have to respond to their partner’s letter and also write on the second theme: daily lifestyle. The writing exchange program has gotten off to a great start on both sides, and students in both countries are now anxiously awaiting their next round of letter.

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

I spent the morning planning Shally's reading lessons for this afternoon. We're in the last week of our first semester, so we're review some problem areas some of the students had during the semester. A common error I noticed with the basic classes was that they still have difficulty with using the auxiliary forms of "do / does" in simple present questions. I often heard questions, such as "Do she go to the market?", or answers like "She go to the market." I figured a review in this area would help remind students of the different forms.

I was able to find a short reading passage from a very useful site called "Handouts Online" that has a variety of lessons for different levels. However, the lessons are for those familiar with British and American society, so I often have to re-write parts of the lesson so that it is more appropriate for Cambodian students. I was running out of time because I had spent too long on planning the pre-intermediate lesson, so I kept the reading passage and added a vocabulary matching activity. The passage had words such as "a bowl of cornflakes" and "a slice of toast", which of course almost all of our students have never heard of. I've found that having the students match new vocabulary to pictures is the quickest way to introduce such cultural terms.

From Shally's observation notes, the matching activity was useful because he was able to avoid an endless barrage of vocabulary questions from students, which always happens in a reading class. Most of the students want to know every single word when they read, but I'm trying to get them into the habit that it's not necessary as long as you have the key vocabulary to understand the main ideas. If we have more money in our budget next year, I would really like to include dictionaries in the students' supply package. An Oxford pocket dictionary is only about $2.50 in the local books.

Anyways, the students in both basic classes were able to complete the grammar section where they had to write down the rule for using auxiliaries in simple present question forms. As usual, students spent most of their time on the speaking activity, which focused on switching between the use of "Do" and "Does" questions. Shally observed that students seemed to be using the forms more correctly. However, in the feedback sessions after the discussions, he noted that students often have difficulty reporting the main points from their partner's conversation. We'll have to teach the students how to give feedback in next semester's lessons.

For the pre-intermediate class, students also had a reading lesson based on the theme of "Happiness". Once again, I got the material from "Handouts Online", but had to rewrite most of the passage because it was laden with too many American idioms. As usual, I was hoping that I had planned a sufficient vocabulary building activity for the students before they started reading the passage. However, once again, students overwhelmed Shally with vocabulary questions. In the passage, most students know the majority of the vocabulary, but the vocabulary knowledge is vastly different from one student to the next. Ideally, I would have students do vocabulary preparation for homework, but it's still the issue of dictionaries. Shally observed that students were fully aware of the main ideas of the passage and could answer all the comprehension questions, but they still wanted to know every single word in the passage. In future reading lessons, I might break up the lesson over two days. The first lesson focusing on comprehension and the next on discussion.

The students were disappointed that they couldn't completely finish the discussion section, but they enjoyed learning about the different types of happiness. In all my years of teaching, I've never come across such a talkative class. I am almost tempted at times to simply tell the students to discuss their classroom tables and chairs, and then leave the classroom for the rest of the lesson. I'm know for sure that they would still be talking about the tables and chairs when I returned to the classroom.

While Shally was teaching this afternoon, I finished up grading all the final drafts for the second writing workshop. Once I get back to Japan, I'll start writing a journal article the different aspects of Cambodian writing style in English.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The end of our first semester is quickly coming to an end. I can't believe how fast the months have passed since we first opened in September. We finished up the first part of our speaking and listening program at the end of January, and then had a two-week intensive writing program consisting of two writing workshops in the Basic (A), Basic (B) and Pre-intermediate courses.

This week we're having a review of the semester with a special emphasis on problem areas faced by most of the students. I was able to observe some of this difficulties during the writing workshops, and have accordingly planned lessons to address these issues.

For today's lesson, I planned a pronunciation lesson of simple past forms. Prior to the lesson, Shally and I had a mini-training session on teaching pronunciation. The textbook we're using for our courses doesn't provide enough activities on pronunciation, so I thought this be a good time to introduce the students to a pronunciation lesson. Shally taught the lessons on his own today to because familiar with the lesson procedure for teaching pronunciation. Once the second semester begins in mid-March, we'll have a few team-teaching sessions.

The concept of the lesson was the same for both the Basic and Pre-intermediate courses, but the activities were slightly more difficult for the Pre-intermediate class. The lesson focused on the different pronunciations for simple past forms: /t/, /d/ and /id/. Many Cambodian students have trouble with simple past pronunciation because they don't have access to audio material nor dictionaries. The purpose of this lesson wasn't to have them sound like a native-speaker, but to make them aware of the sounds so that when they come across a similar word, they can work out the pronunciation by themselves. I also wanted Shally to get across that it's not necessary for the students to sound like a native-speaker, but to avoid misunderstandings that may be caused by pronunciation difficulties.

From Shally's observation notes, he commented that the Basic courses had the most difficulty with the critical thinking part of the lesson. Students had to pronounce a series of words in the past tense and organize them into a table under the headings of /t/, /d/ and /id/. For example, students would have to put "walked" in the /t/ group, "kissed" in the /d/ group, and "decided" in the /id/ group.

For the Pre-intermediate course, they had less difficulty with the sorting idea, but they were very interested to learn that there were actually pronunciation differences when using simple past forms.

For next semester, Shally recommended that we have more pronunciation classes in conjunction with our speaking lessons so that the students get more practice. He believes that the students need more exposure to these types of activities so that they become better speakers. I definitely agree.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

As in many countries, Valentine's Day is also celebrated among the young. In Siem Reap, you can seen rose sellers along the side of the road for the entire day. Even though we had special Valentine's Day lessons at BEA, there were quite a few students missing from today's classes, which is quite unusual. Perhaps the holiday was the reason.

Anyways, I planed several Valentine's Day activities for the basic and pre-intermediate courses. I was able to get a few good ideas from some EFL websites, but many of the activities often have students working on crossword puzzles or word searches. I've used some of these in the past in my classes in Japan, and students usually end up working quietly. Therefore, I had to make them more interactive among the students and the class as a whole.

At the beginning of each class, I elicited the meaning of Valentine's Day and symbols associated with the holiday. I brought up the word "cupid" and explained how this Roman god of love makes unlikely couples fall in love with his arrows. This was the first time I've ever taught a "holiday" class in a Cambodian classroom. Although we focus most of our curriculum on Cambodian customs and cultures, I still feel a little hesitant at times introducing western holidays, especially if they're religious in nature. Since Valentine's Day is celebrated in Cambodia, I felt it was appropriate to start with this holiday as part of their cultural awareness.

For one activity, students had to work in teams to write down as many words as possible from the expression "Happy Valentine's Day". I was a little surprised because the Basic (A) class found a few words that I didn't have on my own list, one of them being "papaya". Students then worked in groups to complete a word search of words associated with Valentine's Day. Before I teach, I always make sure I'm prepared for vocabulary questions from the students, especially since that they often have an endless list of questions concerning vocabulary. However, I overlooked the term "saint" in the word search. When one student asked me to explain this word to her, I was caught off guard because the explanation would have to involve a historical explanation of the legend of St. Valentine's Day. I bumbled through my explanation using the map in our classroom to point out ancient Rome, and some of the students got the gist of the explanation. For next year's lesson, we'll definitely have to have a short reading activity about the legend of St. Valentine. I had actually wanted to do a lesson on St. Valentine, but was pressed for time last week because we were finishing up our second writing workshop. Regardless, it was another valuable learning experience for me.

By the end of the day, I had received a cornucopia of Valentine's gifts from the students. I got a yellow rose and several keychains, along with sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, a roasted cob of corn, and a box of oatmeal cookies. However, the best present was the head of cabbage and bunch of red chili peppers. Truly the most imaginative, and thoughtful, gifts I've ever received.

I managed to find a small bottle of coleslaw dressing in the market last night, so now all I have to do is chop up my head of cabbage, and I have coleslaw for my lunch this week.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

I'm somewhat relieved that today is the last day of our two week writing program. The teaching, of course, was an incredible learning experience. I now know the names of all our students, which makes it much easier to put a face to a name when I have skype meetings with Shally once I'm back in Japan. In addition, I have a much better direction in revising our school's curriculum for next year, as well as tweeking the one for the second semester, which will start mid-March.

The most frustrating part of this program was that there were absolutely no materials whatsoever available here in Siem Reap nor in all the other resource books I brought from Japan. Although I've been teaching academic writing at the university level in Japan for many years now, I've never had to completely design an entire program from scratch. Usually, I am able to pull different ideas from a number of sources to plan a lesson. What I had to do for this program was to use a writing concept, such as brainstorming, and then design all the materials around that concept so that it would be appropriate for a Cambodian classroom. I'm hoping to organize all these materials into a workbook for our program next year. In addition, I'll also make it available through our website with step-by-step lesson plans for Cambodian teachers. I can truly understand their frustrations when they have to teach writing in public school. How do they do it?

Anyways, we had our editing classes for all our courses today for our second writing task. The basic courses had to write about their partner while the pre-intermediate course had to write a cover letter a CV. Once again, most students in the basic courses did not have any trouble with grammar correction. They were able to identify simple grammar errors in their partner's draft. Most of the errors they identified had to do with spelling, capital letters, punctuation, dropping the 3rd person "s", the past tense and plural forms. One student was even able to identify missing subjects in her parnter's draft. Students still had trouble with identifying irrelevant sentences in their partner's draft. This is not surprising since they are still at the basic level, and this type of "critical thinking" activity is usually a challenge for basic level students. In next year's program, I will definitely have to have an entire lesson on identifying coherent and incoherent paragraphs.

While I was editing their drafts the night before, I came across some interesting sentence structure forms, which I would like to further investigate. These are two sentences that caught my eye:

(1) "When he studies already, he cames back home."(2) After he finished dinner already.

These sentences were from two different students, and what surprises me is the use of "already". It is usually used with the present perfect (e.g. I've already studied), so I'm interested in where this error comes from. As I said, it's something I'll have to look into later on.

In the pre-intermediate course, most students have shown a lot of progress in giving feedback to their partner's on their drafts. Similar to the basic students, they were able to give corrections on errors, such as tense, spelling and punctuation. However, they could identify the incorrect use of word forms and prepositions, as well as point out missing words. Some students were even able to show their partner where they needed to add extra details to support their ideas.

During the editing lessons, Shally was helping me with individual feedback. I noticed in the pre-intermediate class that students didn't seem to favor me over Shally when it came to giving feedback.

For homework, all classes had to review their partner's comments on their drafts, as well as my comments, and write their final draft for Monday's class.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Our lessons just flew by yesterday! In the Basic A course, especially, I was busier than usual. A group of students missed Monday's brainstorming session, so I basically have to teach two lessons at the same time. Now I know how public school teachers feel in Canada with split grades!

In our Basic courses, we completed a cluster diagram (=a type of graphic organizer used to organize ideas). Students had to use the information they collected about their partners in their interviews and organize their information into supporting ideas and supporting details. The students basically ran this activity themselves with very little support from me. They were extremely interactive with their partners when it came to adding additional information for each of their supporting ideas.

We then moved on to a review of paragraph structure. I elicited the different parts and their functions, and most of the students were able to recall the information from last week's lessons. I've noticed in my own teaching practices that I make much more use of "elicitation techniques" in Cambodia than I do in Japan because the students seem to love volunteering in class. It's not just one student volunteering, but several at the same time. It often seems like they compete with each other to answers. I absolutely love this type of atmosphere.

Students then got a model paragraph, which was used to reinforce paragraph structure. As usual, we had a vocabulary check after the reading activity. I've been getting better at predicting problem vocabulary areas, and am more prepared for vocabulary explanations in our lessons. However, I've noticed that we definitely need to include more on word forms in our speaking and listening program. For example, in yesterday's class, many students asked for the meaning of "helpful" as in "My teacher is helpful." When I elicited the verb form "help" as in "My teacher helps me", student knew the verb form, but were not aware of the adjective form. This has not been an isolated incident, but such questions come up in almost every lesson. This is especially useful to help me revise next year's curriculum.

In the Pre-intermediate course, we focused on the structure of cover letters. In the first part of our lesson, students had to read a model cover letter. As in the basic classes, students had difficulty in identifying different words forms. For example, they were aware of the verb form of "prepare", but not the noun form "preparation". I was also asked the meaning of "thorough" and was caught off guard. However, I think the students got the general meaning of the word with my spur of the moment explanation.

Student were then given a kinesthetic activity (=a learning activity where students use physical activity). Each group had to arrange cards with the different parts of a cover letter into a coherent structure. They then had to use these cards to identify the different parts on their model cover letter. Afterwards, we had some time to go through some of the expressions used for writing cover letters, but we'll spend today's class on those expressions.

For homework, all classes had to complete their outlines.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

We continued with our second writing task in yesterday's classes. In the Basic (A) class, I used a kinesthetic activity to teach conjunctions (e.g but, and, so). Students were given 15 cards and arrange them into sentences with the correct conjunction. They had no trouble using the word "but" to connect sentences, but they did have a little difficulty with "so". In the feedback session after the activity, Shally gave an explanation of the use of "so" in Khmer, but the students will definitely need more activities with conjunctions in the future.

One noticeable observation is that Cambodian students do quite well at identifying grammar elements in isolated sentences, such as in the card game. However, when students have to identify sentences in a paragraph or make their own sentences, it is still quite a challenge for them. Perhaps in next year's workshop, I will have students identify these elements in a paragraph first and then in individual sentences.

In the Basic (B) course, we didn't have time for the conjunctions card game. Shally and I spent most of the lesson checking outlines. Compared to the first class, this class has had much more trouble with paragraph coherence. While I checked the outlines, the main problem was that students didn't connect some of their supporting sentences to the controlling idea in their topic sentences. Hopefully, the individual feedback with each student will help them with their first drafts. I felt a bit disappointed after this lesson because I thought the students would be able to write their topic sentences this time with less instruction from me. However, this was a mistake on my part, but a very good learning experience. In future workshops, we will definitely have to spend much more time on the parts of a paragraph and more practice activities before they start their own paragraphs. Rather than spending one week on a writing task, I will probably spend two weeks on one writing task. Both Shally and the students have told me this approach to writing is very new to them, and that they are not taught how to write in English in public school.

In the Pre-intermediate course, our lesson focused on formal expressions for writing a cover letter. In order to learn these expressions, we completed a running dictation activity. Students had a lot of fun with this activity, and I'm amazed at the energy they had for a "grammar" activity. During the feedback session, the students, as usual, had an endless list of questions for me. I always feel challenged in the Cambodian classroom because I can never predict what type of questions I will be asked. I definitely spend more time preparing grammar explanations in Cambodia. Regardless, we focused mostly on the differences between formal and informal expressions for writing, such as the differences between "I look forward to ..." and "I'm looking forward to ..."

On a lighter note, the other day Shally told me that the Pre-intermediate class had made up a list of eight rules for their classroom at the beginning of the semester. He told me that I had to ask the students if I wanted to find out. Well, I asked them yesterday, and they proudly revealed their class list of rules. Here they are in random order...

1. No eating. 2. No picking your nose.3. No chewing on your pens.4. Turn off your cell phones.5. Don't be quiet.6. Arrive on time.7. No goofing around.8. No farting.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Well, we're into the second week of our writing program, which means we've started a new task for both the Basic (A), Basic (B) and Pre‐intermediate courses.

Last week was an incredibly learning experience, and I have a really good sense of direction on how to develop future writing programs at the school, and in the future, our own textbook.

For the two Basic courses, I decided to make the writing task a little easier this week. Last week's task was a bit too challenging because I decided to introduce the use of the simple past so that the students could write about an important event in their lives. Regardless, most of the students were able to complete the task well beyond my expectations.

For this week's task, students are going to write a "descriptive paragraph" about their partner's life. In our lesson yesterday, we completed a brainstorming activity. Students had to work together and make a list of interview questions, and then they had to interview their partner and note down the information. A few pairs came up with some interesting questions, such as "Who do you like best in your family?" and "Why do you like Cambodia?" Almost all of the student had no problem with making questions forms in the simple present tense. In yesterday's class, there were two noticeable observations. First, stronger students seem to automatically help those who are much weaker. They are very generous with their help. We have a few students with very little knowledge of their own native language (Khmer) and no previous English language experience. The stronger students will often play the role of "note‐taker" for them because their ability to write Roman letters is still very weak. Second, I have yet to tell the class to "stop speaking Khmer". I am somewhat shocked that for a Basic level course, I never hear the students use their native language.

For the Pre‐intermediate course, we're learning how to write a cover letter for a CV. I'm actually basing my upcoming conference presentation (CamTESOL) in Phnom Penh at the end of February on this workshop. I'm hoping that the lesson plans and materials I develop this week will help Cambodian teachers in their classrooms.

Similar to the Basic course, we spent the lesson brainstorming ideas, but there was a much greater focus on vocabulary acquisition. Although many of the students have quite a fluent level of speaking, I often forget that Cambodian classes need to have a larger vocabulary component than in my Japanese classes. This is mainly because almost all students do not have access to dictionaries, so it is not possible to give them "vocabulary homework" to prepare for the next day.

Similar to last week's brainstorming session, we used a "cluster" diagram. Students had to choose a job they would like to have in the future, and note down the different types of qualifications necessary for that job. Before the activity, we went through the vocabulary needed to write about qualifications. There was a bit of confusion about the differences between diploma, degree, certificate and license, so I'll have to make sure to review these terms again in today's lesson. Once again, I was very impressed by the high hopes the students have for their lives. Most of the students are between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and they aspire to be managers, doctors, journalists, teachers, and lawyers.

The students in all the classes were quite relieved when I didn't assign homework for last night. However, they'll be plenty of homework tonight. I also have quite a bit of homework myself, especially after collecting the final drafts for the students' first writing task.

Back to the books,Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.